Emotional Intelligence Based Instructional Package (EIBIP)
Interest in Emotional Intelligence can, in part, be gauged by the amount of research activity it has stimulated since first making an appearance in the psychological literature about 20 years ago. Everyone can profit from enhancing his or her emotional intelligence, because this important construct has a positive impact on human performance, leading to personal effectiveness and eventually to overall well-being.
Conventionally, a teacher brings two things to the classroom that are of value to the learners, one is expertise in the subject and the other is knowledge of teaching - learning methods. Emotional Intelligence is the unrecognized third component what a teacher possess and also delivers to her learners indirectly. From the last two decades educational professionals understood the importance of feelings in the overall development of their pupils and in their own daily tasks. Teachers are aware of the role played by emotions in their daily effort. Emotions and skills for coping with them affect learning processes, mental and physical health, the quality of social relationships and academic and work performance (Brackett & Caruso, 2007). Teaching is considered to be one of the most stressful occupations, especially because it involves daily work based on social interactions where the teacher must make great effort to regulate not only his or her own emotions, but also those of students, parents, colleagues etc., (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002). As emotional intelligence is playing vital role in teaching the present study is attempted to adopt emotional intelligence based teaching strategies to enhance emotional intelligence which in turn influence teaching competence. The objective of this study is to develop knowledge among student teachers about their strengths and development of opportunities related to the emotional intelligence competencies. In the present study the researcher identified Self awareness, Managing Emotions, Motivating Oneself, Empathy and Handling Relationship (Goleman 1998) from the different models proposed by Bar-On, Goleman & Boyatzis, Mayor, Salovey & Caruso, Orioli & Cooper. The investigator developed an emotional intelligence package with activities for each component. Pre – Post Two group experimental design was adopted in study with a sample of 25 each in experimental and control group.
The result showed that the emotional intelligence package was successful as it evinced an increased Emotional intelligence on the sample. Further, the study revealed that the student teachers are able to understand their innate potentials and the ability to tackle stressful situations. They also expressed their emotions openly and also read the minds of colleagues. The present study is a lime light for the student teachers to prepare them in a holistic approach to uphold their emotional intelligence and promote better emotional intelligence among their students by designing their classroom activities in a more refined manner.
Emotions play a quite significant role in guiding and directing our behavior. Emotions have traditionally been identified as a category different from cognition or reasoning. Skills such as analytic reasoning or technical expertise or problem solving are purely cognitive whereas, combination of thought and feelings are termed as emotional. Such combination of cognitive (thought), affective (emotion) and conative (motivation) domains opens a new area of intelligence called Emotional Intelligence.
Emotional Intelligence evolved along with humankind. It is as old as time. It is not a fad or a trend, nor is it new as many people believe. It seems novel only because it was shuffled aside by the twentieth century fixation on scientific data and rationalism at any cost. The social sciences are only catching up and becoming acceptable. Interest in Emotional Intelligence can, in part, be gauged by the amount of research activity it has stimulated since first making an appearance in the psychological literature about 20 years ago. Everyone can profit from enhancing his or her emotional intelligence, because this important construct has a positive impact on human performance, leading to personal effectiveness and eventually to overall wellbeing.
Emotional intelligence in Education probably depend at least as much on the way teachers publically respond to their own shifting moods and stresses, the way they deal with the learners in the classroom. Teachers are the most important piece of education system. They have to use social and emotional abilities as the result of their duty and social statute. According to Guy Claxton 'Learning itself is an intrinsically emotional business' (Claxton 1999). The process of learning in any context can involve struggle, frustration, thrill or excitement. In the public and formal context of the classroom, with all of the dynamics between teacher and learner and between learners, and with the perception that there is the prospect of success or failure, the potential for strong feelings is heightened. It follows that if the job of a teacher is to help their learners to learn, a teacher needs to be able to recognize the emotional dimension of learning and to work with it, teachers need to use their emotional intelligence. However, many teachers fail to recognize the role of emotional intelligence in their work. There are teachers who were very competent in their teaching skills, but who simply did not pay attention to their emotional dimensions fail in their professional life.
Conventionally, a teacher brings two things to the classroom. One is expertise in the subject and the other is knowledge of learning and teaching methods – a teacher's pedagogy, such as how to structure the content being presented, how to encourage participation by learners, use of materials and so on. Emotional intelligence is the unrecognized third component of what a teacher and also delivers to her learners indirectly.
From the last two decades educational professionals understood the importance of feelings in the overall development of their pupils and in their own daily tasks. Teachers are aware of the role played by emotions in their daily effort. Emotions and skills for coping with them affect learning processes, mental and physical health, the quality of social relationships and academic and work performance (Brackett & Caruso, 2007). Teaching is considered to be one of the most stressful occupations, especially because it involves daily work based on social interactions where the teacher must make great effort to regulate not only his or her own emotions, but also those of students, parents, colleagues etc., (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002).
The current lack of recognition of the importance of emotional intelligence for teachers is reflected in teacher training courses at all levels. It is time to recognize the central role that emotions play in learning and to ensure that emotional intelligence is a part of every teacher's professional development. Emotional intelligence helps the prospective teachers to be professionally competent to manage tomorrow's turbulent classrooms. Nurturing emotional intelligence creates not only higher achievement in individuals, but also increased on-task behaviours and reduction in discipline problems, without EQ, IQ remains a potential.
Education has a crucial role to play in enlarging and enlightening the mind to enable the individual to be effective and successful professionally and personally in life. The complexity of contemporary life confronts an individual with many critical crises. So it often becomes for an individual to cope up with the problems of life, here the concept of emotional intelligence plays a significant role. Building ones EI has a lifelong impact, EQ helps us to understand how and why we react and respond to certain events in the organization, it also helps us to appreciate that our daily encounters are shaped not just by rational judgment and our personal history but are largely influenced by our perceptions and expectations .
The Primary function of teachers is imparting academic skills and it is a fact beyond doubt. But most of the researchers have been concerned with identifying certain other functions, which are responsible for individual difference among teachers in realm of scholastic accomplishment. Apart from the intellectual capacities factors like social and emotional intelligence have been considered important for a teacher to perform effectively in the school.
There are two main theoretical approaches for assessing emotional intelligence. The first approach is known as the mixed-model framework, which generally comprises selfreport instruments that measure a combination of cognitive, personality and affective attributes. The second approach is known as the ability model framework, which views EI as a traditional intelligence and is comprised of a set of skills that combines emotions with cognition (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2008). However the measuring devices discussed above are mainly concentrating on assessing emotional intelligence of the individuals as how they respond in particular situations and what will be their attitude or dispositions towards certain personal and professional circumstances. All these measures will give a consolidated measure of one's EI and just suggest some of the ways for improving the emotional intelligence but no such device show a practical approach for improving the emotional intelligence in the real settings. The Emotional Intelligence Based Instructional Package (EIBIP) was a creative initiative on this area to enhance the emotional intelligence of teachers and prospective teachers with real situation based strategies and hands on practices as they can really shape the classroom practices for better development of the individual.
Emotional Intelligence Based Instructional Package is an interactive instructional package developed for enhancing the emotional intelligence of teachers and prospective teachers exclusively. The package has got sound theoretical base as it peep into the theories of Bar- On, Mayer & Salovey and Daniel Goleman extensively and the practical model developed by Marcia Hughes, Bonita Patterson and J.B.Terrel for enhancing emotional intelligence in training and coaching activities for leaders and managers.
Emotional Intelligence Based Instructional Package (EIBIP)
The real fact is that emotional intelligence can be nurtured, developed and augmented. It is not a trait that we either have or don't have. We can increase our emotional intelligence at any time in our life as we learn and practice the skills that makeup the concept of emotional intelligence. People can be taught to become more emotionally intelligent which enables them to become more successful in life. Teachers can instill in learners the ability to be emotionally self aware, insightful regarding the motivation of others, more able to cope with emotional dilemmas in life, more empathetic towards their peers, more socially adept, able to solve problems and resolve conflict.
Teachers can teach emotional intelligence by their being, by how they handle difficult situations and how they tune into the social dynamics between the learners lives. A competent teacher should be a successful leader for guiding the young minds for a creative and competent personal and professional life. Greater the academic responsibility and leadership task, the more important our emotional intelligence competencies.
The critical analysis of the important emotional intelligence models and measures realized that all these measures pursue in evaluating different aspects of emotional intelligence are constructed based on the behavioral outcomes of the western people. When considering the people of India, who are not much outburst in their behaviors, keep inferior nature while dealing with elders & teachers and those with indigenous nature & having low or average income feel worried to respond truly before rich people. To assess the emotional intelligence of these group/individuals is a big challenge. Moreover, there are many Indian made emotional intelligence tests, which only measures the emotional intelligence of the people but does not give any specific idea for improving the emotional intelligence of a group. Emotional Intelligence Based Instructional Package (EIBIP) specifically for teachers/prospective teachers was an innovative package for enhancing emotional intelligence by taking the scientific background of the concepts from Mayor and Salovey emotional intelligence components.
The package was developed by concentrating the five dimensions of Goleman like Self awareness, managing emotions, motivating oneself, empathy and handling relationship. Four components for each of the five dimensions were identified as one precedes the other and finally the Emotional Intelligence Package is developed by considering all the above components in detail. The package provides sufficient activities to promote or to develop the components specified above. The package is organized in the following way. First it describes the purpose of the task to undergo as Objective, then what to do in each and every task as Thumbnail, then the expected outcome of the work that we do as Outcome, on what sample we are adopting this package as Audience, the materials needed for this execution as Materials, the division of time to specific segments of the total task as Time Matrix, then detailed information about what they have to do as Instructions and finally what data you want to get from them in the form of bunch of questions as Task Card. Modular approach was adopted for conducting the activity or executing the task.
The objectives of the study are as follows
The hypotheses set for the study are as follows
Experimental method was adopted for the study. The experimental design used in this study was Pre-test – Posttest equivalent group design.
The study was conducted on a sample of 50 prospective teachers (B.Ed students) from N.S.S.Training College, Ottapalam. The sample was matched with respect to gender and both the groups were matched with respect to pre-emotional intelligence. Care was taken to ensure that the sample selected were equivalent in many aspects like the subject they study and treatment they receive etc. For smooth conduct of the experiment and for practical reasons it was decided to select sample from the college ensuring equivalence in both groups.
Standardized tools were used for assessing the emotional intelligence and teaching competency of prospective teachers. The tools used in the study are as follows
The objective was to study the effect of Emotional Intelligence Based Instructional Package (EIBIP) by considering pre-emotional intelligence as covariate. The data were analyzed with the help of One Way ANCOVA by considering pre-emotional intelligence as covariate. The results are given in Table 1.
Table 1. Summary of One Way ANCOVA of Emotional Intelligence by taking Pre-Emotional Intelligence as covariate
Table 1, it can be seen that the adjusted F-Value (MSSy.x of Treatment/error) is 12.08 (table value is 7.17) which is significant at 0.01 level with df= 1/47. It shows that the adjusted mean scores of emotional intelligence of experimental group and control group differ significantly. Further from Table 2 the adjusted mean scores of emotional intelligence of experimental group is 401.6 which is significantly higher than that of the control group whose adjusted mean score of emotional intelligence is 368.8. It may, therefore, be said that the Emotional Intelligence Based Instructional Package (EIBIP) could significantly enhance the emotional intelligence of the students when pre-emotional intelligence was considered as covariate. The results are in agreement with the observation made by Caruso & Salovey (2004), they told that if people were ask to solve emotional problems and when correction is made on their response some sort of emotional intelligence is developed for them.
Table 2. Summary of Adjusted Mean Scores of Emotional Intelligence by taking Pre Emotional Intelligence as Covariate
The objective was to study the relationship between emotional intelligence and teaching competency of the Experimental group before and after the treatment separately. The data were analyzed with the help of Product Moment Correlation and the results are given in Table 3.
Table 3. Correlation between Emotional Intelligence and Teaching Competencyof the Experimental group before and after the treatment separately
From Table 3, it can be seen that the correlation coefficients between emotional intelligence and teaching competency before and after the Treatment are 0.565 and 0.613 respectively which are significant at 0.01 level with df= 1/48. It reflects that both emotional intelligence and teaching competency were positively and significantly related to each other, both before as well as after the Treatment. Further the percentage of commonness between emotional intelligence and teaching competency before and after the treatment was found to be 31.92% and 37.58% respectively. It reflects that there was 5.66% change in the commonness shared between emotional intelligence and teaching competency after the treatment. The raise of the percentage of commonness shows the influence of the Emotional Intelligence Based instructional Package (EIBIP) on the experimental group with a greater significance at 0.01 level. The results are in good agreement with the results of the study done by Hwang, Fei-Fei,(2003) who says that the faculty members who performed superior in overall EI skills tended to achieve higher teaching effectiveness (r=0.744).
The emotional intelligence based instructional package (EIBIP) could significantly enhance emotional intelligence of the prospective teachers when preemotional intelligence was considered as covariate. The F-Value is 12.08 (table value is 7.17) which is significant at 0.01 level with df= 1/47. The adjusted mean scores of emotional intelligence of experimental group (401.6) and control group (368.8) differ significantly.
The growing empirical link between emotional intelligence and academic success showed that there has been an increase in the programs and activities that target the development of various emotional intelligence competencies within children and youth in elementary and secondary schools. Recently implementation of programs that target emotional and social competencies has become a priority in many schools. However, there has been little evidence supporting the inclusion of such programs within schools.
The study promotes an insightful idea for curricular restructuring in all most all levels of teacher education. It promotes a deeper understanding of emotional and work place competencies concerned with teachers and in teacher education field. The study also gives an idea of the intervention programs that need to be carried out in the schools for earlier promotion of emotional intelligence among school students.
It provides an empirical basis for suggesting that educational administrators could use the investigated personal factors like emotional intelligence to predict the teaching competency which will provide prospective teachers with tools to achieve long term success, increase awareness of interdependence, personal responsibility for choices and consequential thinking, create learning environment that arouse and sustain student curiosity and intrinsic motivation to build a context where high achievement is valuable and enjoyable.
Emotional intelligence should be the deciding factor in all levels of educational judgement because “it is with the heart that one sees rightly what is essential is invisible to the eye” The study suggest that it is possible to develop the emotional intelligence of prospective teachers and also shows a strong positive relationship between emotional intelligence and teaching competency. Therefore the study has remarked the importance of enhancing social and emotional competencies in elementary, secondary and higher secondary school system.